MARTINEZ — There were no warning signs before a County Jail inmate fatally attacked a veteran nurse who was giving him medical aid in the jail in October 2010, witnesses said Tuesday.

“It seemed like a routine medical screening going on,” U.S. Immigrations and Customs Agent Fabien Saab testified at a coroner’s inquest into the death of 55-year-old El Sobrante resident Cynthia Barraca Palomata. She was a longtime county-employed nurse who had been working at the Contra Costa jail in Martinez.

“It was a very fast and vicious strike from this inmate,” Saab said. “He quickly grabbed the lamp and, with great force, struck her with it.”

El Cerrito resident Aaron Nygaard, 35, is awaiting trial for murder on charges he struck Palomata in the head with a metal lamp after he admittedly faked a seizure and was brought to the jail nurse’s station Oct. 25, 2010. Palomata was getting ready to treat Nygaard for alcohol withdrawal. She never regained consciousness and died Oct. 28 of blunt force head trauma.

Nygaard had been booked into the jail the day of the attack on suspicion of burglarizing an El Cerrito residence. Jail deputies said Nygaard gave them no indication that he would be violent before he attacked Palomata.

After the attack, it took deputies nearly an hour to restrain him, they said. Nygaard, described as very strong, was throwing his body around, fighting and spitting at deputies. They used a stun gun on him and shackled him, and struggled to get him into a restraining “safety chair” before eventually subduing him with an injection.

“He was completely out of control,” said Sgt. Oscar Aranda. “It was very hard to subdue and restrain him.”

The Contra Costa sheriff’s coroner’s office holds inquests into all in-custody and officer-related deaths to publicly air findings from investigations. Jurors determine the mode or manner of death, but do not assign civil or criminal liability.

Tuesday’s jury determined that Palomata died “at the hands of another, other than by accident.”

Nygaard, who remains jailed in Alameda County, is scheduled to return to court Nov. 2 to set a trial date.

As social media companies wrestle with how to police dangerous health misinformation on their platforms, Pinterest has taken an extreme approach: blocking search results related to vaccinations, whether the results are medically accurate or not.